THE COLLEGE that tops this year's independent schools A-level tables has a history going back more than 600 years. Winchester College charges its boarders more than pounds 15,000 a year: most of them are in the top 10 per cent for academic ability.

THERE ARE many hundreds of people going about their lives today who were at one time quietly but indelibly influenced in their love of music by Christopher Cowan. Some of his pupils have become composers - like Gerard McBurney. Some are notable performers - like Peter Phillips, founder and conductor of the Tallis Scholars, or Steven Isserlis, the cellist. Some are distinguished academics - like Hugh MacDonald; or craftsmen and technicians - like Mark Venning, head of Harrison & Harrison, the organ builders.

TEENAGE SOLDIERS were subjected to a "bullying" and "degrading" regime by instructors, which included a mock execution, being ordered to simulate sex acts and forced to eat mud and soap, a court martial was told yesterday.

Sir: Your article on the "battle" over Winchester's park-and-ride (5 July) fails to make it clear that it is an extension to an existing scheme which was built as an experiment to test whether the principle of park-and-ride would work in Winchester. It has been too successful: virtually every weekday it is full by 9.15 so that it is available only to commuters arriving early in the morning.

SWITCHING ON Radio 3 in the middle of pieces one fails to recognise can result in piquant moments of truth: surprise at something interesting turning out to be by a composer one thought one loathed or, more unsettling, at something unappealing by a composer one believed that one loved. Tuning in mid-way to Saturday afternoon's Listeners' Choice, I chanced upon the opening bars of what turned out to be a sonata for clarinet and piano in four neatly turned and charmingly melodious movements.